A Night in the Tavern: Where Everything Smells Like Ale and Doom

SPOILER ALTERT: HELLZ KITCHEN EPISODE 2: UNWELCOME GUESTS

Step inside, beautiful creature. The door sticks. The air tastes like spilled beer and old secrets. Somewhere in the dark, a chair creaks like it is trying to warn you. This is the Tavern in the Woods. A cosy little pit where trouble comes to drink and our party comes to pretend they are normal.

They fail every time.

The night begins with a soft suggestion to change the music. Innocent enough. Except nothing in our world stays innocent for long. Deadhorn grunts his approval. Cadence hums over his dice like they might answer back. Morrigan sharpens her blade the way some people file their nails. The room hums with that warm buzzing fear that means something awful is about to happen.

And then something awful does.

A halfling crashes through the window. Tied up like a gift no one wants. Glass everywhere. Ropes everywhere. Panic everywhere. Deadhorn catches him before he splats on the floor, but the little guy is coated in something sticky. Something that clings. Something that whispers a quiet hello to your nightmares.

No time to think. No time to breathe.

The floorboards start to tremble. Glowing centipedes spill from the cracks. Long. Bright. Hungry. They crawl in patterns that should not exist. Morrigan steps forward with her sword. Deadhorn lifts his axe with a smile far too wide. Cadence shows off his corkscrew, a weapon that absolutely should not work but somehow does. The fight is fast. Messy. Glorious.

And just when the party thinks they have survived the worst, the real terror arrives.

She steps from the shadows like a bad dream with perfect timing. Wings stitched where wings do not belong. Eyes full of hunger. Voice soft enough to make your bones go cold. She wants the halfling back. She wants many things. None of them good.

The tavern falls quiet. Too quiet. The kind of quiet that presses on your chest and asks if you are sure you want to keep going.

The night ends, but the danger does not. Our adventurers are left with sticky hands and shaking hearts and a whole pile of questions that smell like trouble. The Tavern in the Woods is no longer a safe place. It never was. They just finally noticed.

Come back for the next chapter, if you dare. Subscribe and follow our chaos. The woods are waiting. And they are hungry.